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Creepshow
Creepshow is the first film in the Creepshow series to occur in the Horror Movie Universe. Plot Prologue A young boy named Billy gets yelled at and slapped by his father, Stan, for reading a horror comic titled Creepshow. Stan reminds his wife that he had to be hard on Billy because he does not want their son to be reading such "crap." As Billy sits upstairs cursing his father with hopes of him rotting in Hell, he hears a sound at the window, which turns out to be a ghostly apparition in the form of The Creep from the comic book, beckoning him to come closer. Father's Day First story, written by King specifically for the film Nathan Grantham, the miserly old patriarch of a family whose fortune was made through bootlegging, fraud, extortion, and murder-for-hire, is killed on Father's Day by his long-suffering spinster daughter Bedelia. Bedelia was already unstable as the result of a lifetime spent putting up with her father's incessant demands and emotional abuse, which culminated in his orchestrating the murder of her sweetheart. The sequence begins seven years later, when the remainder of Nathan's descendants—including Nathan's granddaughter Sylvia, his great-grandchildren Richard, Cass, and Cass' husband Hank—get together for their annual dinner on the third Sunday in June. Bedelia, who typically arrives later than the others, stops in the cemetery outside the family house to lay a flower at the grave site and drunkenly reminisce about how she murdered her insufferable, overbearing father. When she accidentally spills her whiskey bottle in front of the headstone, it seems to have a reanimating effect on the mortal remains interred below. Suddenly, Nathan's putrefied, maggot-infested corpse emerges from the burial plot in the form of a revenant who has come back to claim the Father's Day cake he never got. Before obtaining his long-desired pastry, the revenant avenges himself on Bedelia and the rest of his idle, scheming, money-grubbing heirs, killing them off one by one, which includes some apparent supernatural abilities such as making a heavy tombstone move by will. The final freeze-frame shows the undead Nathan in the kitchen triumphantly carrying a platter that is crowned with Sylvia's freshly severed head and covered with cake candles. The corpse gurgles hoarsely at a terrified Richard and Cass, "It's Father's Day, and I got my cake! Happy Father's Day!" The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill Second story, originally titled "Weeds", adapted from a previously published short story written by King Jordy Verrill, a dimwitted backwoods yokel, thinks that a newly discovered meteorite will provide enough money from the local college to pay off his $200 bank loan. As the meteorite is too hot to touch, he douses it with water, causing it to crack open and spew a glowing green substance. He then finds himself being overcome by a rapidly spreading plant-like organism that begins growing on his body. Jordy is eventually cautioned by the ghost of his father not to take a bath. But when the itching from the growth on his skin becomes unbearable, Jordy succumbs to temptation and collapses into the bathwater. By the next morning, Jordy and his farm have been completely covered with dense layers of the hideous alien vegetation. In despair, he reaches for a shotgun and blows the top of his head off. A radio weather forecast announces that heavy rains are predicted and the audience is left with the dire expectation that this will accelerate the spread of the extraterrestrial plant growth to surrounding areas. Something to Tide You Over Third story, written by King expressly for the film Richard Vickers, a wealthy psychopath whose spry, devil-may-care jocularity belies his cold-blooded murderousness, stages a terrible fate for his unfaithful wife, Becky, and her lover, Harry Wentworth, by burying them up to their necks on the beach below the high tide line. He explains that they have a chance of survival - if they can hold their breath long enough for the sand to loosen once the seawater covers them they could break free and escape. He also sets up several closed-circuit TV cameras so he can watch them die from the comfort of his well-appointed beach house. However, Richard is in for a surprise of his own when the two lovers he murdered return as a pair of waterlogged, seaweed-covered revenants intent on giving him a dose of his own deadly punishment. He tries in vain to shoot them but they both remind him that "You can't kill someone if they're already dead!" The final scene reveals that Richard has been buried in the beach at low tide, facing the approaching tide (and the sight of two sets of footprints disappearing in the surf). While the tide is rising, he laughs hysterically and screams "I can hold my breath for a long time!" The frame then freezes into animation and the pages start flipping again. They come to a stop on the title of the next story, which is one of the longer entries at nearly 30 minutes. The Crate Fourth story, adapted from a previously published short story A college custodian Mike drops a quarter and finds a wooden storage crate, hidden under some basement stairs for 148 years. He notifies a college professor, Dexter Stanley, of the find. The two decide to open the crate and it is found to contain an extremely lethal creature2 resembling a Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, which despite its diminutive size promptly kills and entirely devours Mike, leaving behind only his boot. Escaping, Stanley runs into a graduate student, Charlie Gereson who is skeptical and investigates. Gereson and Stanley find that the crate has been moved back under the stairs and Gereson is killed by the creature as he examines the crate. Stanley then flees and informs his friend and colleague at the university, the mild-mannered Professor Henry Northrup, of his recent experience. Professor Stanley, now traumatized and hysterical, babbles to Northrup that the deadly monster must be disposed of somehow. Northrup sees the creature as a way to rid himself of his perpetually drunk, obnoxious and emotionally abusive wife, Wilma, whom he often daydreams of killing. He contrives a scheme to lure her near the crate where the beast does indeed maul and eat her. Northrup later secures the beast back inside its crate, and drops it into a nearby lake, where it sinks to the bottom, and he returns to assure Professor Stanley that the creature is no more. However, it is subsequently revealed to the audience that the beast has escaped from its crate, and is in fact still alive and well. They're Creeping Up on You! Fifth and final story, written by King expressly for the film Upson Pratt is a cruel, ruthless businessman whose mysophobia has him living in a hermetically sealed apartment controlled completely with electric locks and surveillance cameras. During a particularly severe lightning storm he finds himself looking out over the steel canyons of New York City as a rolling blackout travels his way. When it hits his apartment tower, the terror begins for Mr. Pratt, and the fun begins for the audience. The ruthless tycoon now finds himself helpless when his flat becomes overrun by countless hordes of aggressive multi-sized cockroaches—perhaps symbolizing the revenge of all the "little people" he has spent his entire life stepping on. As the cockroaches begin to overrun him, he locks himself inside a panic room, only to find the cockroaches have already infested the room as well. With no way to escape, the roaches swarm on him, causing Pratt to suffer a fatal heart attack. Immediately afterwards, electricity returns to the building, revealing Pratt's corpse in the panic room, and not a cockroach in sight. However, Pratt's body soon begins to contort, and the roaches grotesquely burst out of his mouth and body, enveloping the panic room. Epilogue The following morning, two garbage collectors find the Creepshow comic book in the trash. They look at the ads in the book for X-ray specs and a Charles Atlas bodybuilding course. They also see an advertisement for a voodoo doll, but lament that the order form has already been redeemed. Inside the house, Stan complains of neck pain, which escalates and becomes deadly as Billy repeatedly and gleefully jabs the voodoo doll while his accursed father screams in agony as Billy finally gets revenge on him for his past abuse. Cast Trivia *This is the first anthology film in the Horror Movie Universe.